


For the love of (a) God

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Timelines [34]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Drama, F/M, Gods, Higher beings, Implied Sexual Content, Love, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-04-23 16:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14336139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: Ren is to be executed by a God for a crime that she isn't even certain of, though she doesn't think she's committed any wrongdoing. Leo refuses his siblings demands for Ren's death, and instead takes her somewhere she should be safe. A little house up on a cliff with a seaside view is their sanctuary.It isn't Leo's fault that they happen to fall in love. It isn't Ren's fault that his siblings hate her. It's neither of their faults that things happen the way they do._____All pieces of the Timelines series are standalones and can be read without context.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of the very beginning are partly based on this weird dream I had with Leo in it. It just spiraled out of control once I put Ren in.
> 
> This is what happens when you play homebrew DND before bed. You have weird dreams about the characters.

Renee is twenty-three when she sees the sea for the first time. She's been aimlessly wandering for three years now, and after a month of distracted traveling, she's finally made it to the seaside. It's been a dream of hers to see the water for real, not just in a grainy old world textbook with poorly printed pixelated photos. She wants to taste the water, gather seashells for her own instead of buying them from folks who make trips to the sea. But first, she wants a sight to remember.

The sand is annoying and gritty to the touch, and it's in her shoes. It's unpleasant. But it feels like silk, gritty silk, when she lets a handful of it fall through her fingers. That, at least, she's not going to taste.

She can hear the rush of the ocean before she can see it, trekking up one of the the sloping cliffs to get a better view. Ren isn't fond of water, when she eventually goes down to wade she isn't getting in past her knees. But from up high, she can get the best kind of view.

There are shapes further up. They look human, but she's not quite sure. She thinks of calling out to them, but her head suddenly doesn't feel right, kind of like a headrush out of nowhere. Time seems to blink, and next thing she knows, she's closer to them than she should be. It blinks again, and now she's front of four rather unhappy looking people. Her head hurts when she tries to think about what just happened. Ren shakes her head, tries to clear her mind.

There are four of them, two women, a man, and she can't really focus on the fourth. The man stands off to the side with his arms crossed over his chest, silent, having little expression on his face. Ren can tell he's not pleased, though, towards the others and not herself. They call Ren a liar and a cheat, though Ren has no idea what she's done wrong. Has she even had the time to do something wrong? Is she trespassing? But what would that have to do with her being a 'liar and a cheat'? Her head aches even more viciously when she tries to think about it.

One of the women regards her, barely containing her snarl. Her eyes shift through colors on a way that shouldn't be possible. From an unnatural green, to red, to blue, and every other color that seems to exist. Some that Ren can't even comprehend. Is she a God? Or the child of one, perhaps?

Ren doesn't really know what's going on. Her head feels foggy, and everything sounds like her head is in a bubble. Nothing is making sense. Time still doesn't feel right. She shakes her head again, but nothing clears up. The other woman, with long silver hair and a young face, agrees with the one with shifting eyes. Unfocusable, genderless person also seems to agree with the both of them, though Ren can't really hear them speak. The agreement comes through clear enough, though.

They want Ren dead.

They elect the man to do it. He's silent, doesn't seem to agree with their decision but doesn't fight it. The three are the judge and jury, and he is the executioner, it seems. Shifting eyes woman points out on the horizon, tell him it must be done on an island. She calls the island "Mother".

Nobody tries to stop Ren when she runs. There's nowhere for her to go but down to a messy, painful death. She falls to her hands and knees at the edge of the cliff face, the rocky terrain encrusted with shells that dig into the tender flesh of her knees and palms. She can see the island in the distance. It seems to be made up of the same rock and shell that she's currently resting on, though she can really only tell by the color and uneven appearance.

The ocean is just as beautiful as she imagined it would be. Soft, blue-green, rippling and waving under the warmth of the afternoon sun. The island (Mother?) makes the whole scene look like something from a postcard, or an old illustration.

The man comes up behind her, slow and quiet, and merely watches the ocean with her while Shifty Eyes tells him it's a long trip. Probably trying to tell him to get on with it, already. He says nothing though, stands just behind Ren and stays stone still. Eventually, he leans down and offers Ren a hand, and helps her to her feet when she takes it.

She's certain she's done nothing wrong. Definitely noting like where she was being accused of, though she can't exactly remember what the women said. She also can't remember much else. Ren was walking to the cliff and then... just black spots in her memory. Maybe she did do something? It makes her head hurt so bad that her eyes water when she tries to recall the memories. There's just nothing there.

Unused to walking on sand, she stumbles. The man catches her, holds her steady for a moment, then continues guiding her along. His hand is warm on her lower back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all excited for the first multi chaptered Timelines fic? It's pretty short right now, but the chapters get longer as it goes on.


	2. Chapter 2

It does end up being a long trip. The waters are oddly calm, with nary a wave. Just the splash of the oars in the water as he brings the like boat just slightly closer. There's nothing else to do, so they talk. Well, Ren mostly talks. He answers sometimes.

He calls himself Leo. The three are his siblings, in some strange, convoluted way. None of them look the same, but from what Ren can gather, they're probably the children of a God. That makes them Gods by default. He does nothing but confirm her suspicion when he declines her meager supplies, tells her that he doesn't need to eat.

Leo, she thinks, is pretty. With his olive skin, black hair, and strong features, he's just nice to look at. She tells him as much, but he doesn't reply to that. He doesn't reply to a lot of what she says, and it takes a few hours to traverse and find topics he'll actually respond to. She does get a few faint smiles from him every now and then, but that's about as much expression as she can wrestle out of him.

Night comes, slowly but surely, and she eventually falls asleep with the boat rocking her. Ren awakens to the sun warming her skin and the island being much, much closer than it was the last time she saw it. They'll be there in merely a few hours, if that. She's stiff when she sits up and stretches. Her body wasn't meant to contour into the position she was sleeping in, and she looks to Leo as she massages the pain from her neck.

Leo still looks just the same, his arms never seeming to grow tired, no bags darkening under his eyes. A God then, without a doubt. He still refuses to eat when she offers dried fruit too him, and confirms that while he certainly can, he doesn't need to eat or sleep. He's less talkative as they get closer to the little island, which grows bigger as the hours pass.

She's oddly not nervous with he helps her up onto the island, the flats of her shoes heavy on the holey, porous white rock that makes up the island. If they want her dead, then she's got no choice. What can she do, try to swim away? She certainly couldn't have run. Leo's strong enough to have drug her if she was thrashing and screaming, could have just held her under the surf until she went still and the bubbles stopped. But he seems kind enough, holds her hand like a lady to assist her and helps her keep her footing.

Ren kneels near a single palm tree lightly waving in the wind, the rocky surface scratching her knees up. She doesn't want to tear her skirt by tucking it under her to soften the bite of the rock, so she just deals with it. Leo comes behind her, quiet and solemn. He rests a hand on her shoulder.

"How do you want to do this?"

She's never heard of the executioner asking for preference. "What will hurt the least?"

"Everything is going to hurt," he tells her truthfully.

"But what will hurt the least?"

Leo lets out a breath, and she hears him taking something off. Unsheathing something, maybe. The solid weight of something cold and metal presses to the back of her skull a moment later.

"It won't hurt the least," he admits, "but it will be over the fastest."

Ren isn't scared. She's made peace with wherever God might be listening to her, and staring out at the ocean isn't the worst view. It's nice, and she doesn't mind that it's the last thing she's ever going to see. It's a beautiful last sight. Her fingers curl into the rock, dislodging a few shells as she does. She waits, and closes her eyes as she hears him cock the hammer.

He draws in a deep breath. She can hear him taking a step back, and she tries to focus on the sound of the ocean around her.

The shot never comes.

Leo pulls the gun from her head after a long pause and mutters, "You've done nothing wrong."

She turns in surprise, scraping her skin a little as she does. He's shaking his head, securing his gun back in its holster on his hip. "You've done nothing wrong," he repeats, offering her a hand and pulling her to her feet. "You haven't done a thing to deserve this."

Much like the first time he escorted her, he keeps pace with her, his palm flat on her lower back. His steps are sure as he guides her back to where he left the rowboat, still miraculously in place even though he hasn't secured it down with anything. Watching him, his face is like stone. Ren can read something in his expression, but she can't quite figure out what.

Leo helps her into the little boat first, and the moment his foot touches the wood, every wave in the area flattens out into nothing but calm water. He takes his place at the oars and doesn't hesitate to begin rowing again, and she hears him murmur, more to himself than her, "You've done nothing wrong."


	3. Chapter 3

The bed Ren wakes up in is soft, and certainly not her own. All she has is a small, stiff cot sized for a child. She's stretched out in this, and her feet aren't hanging over the edge, so it's not her bed. Thinking harder about it, it wouldn't make sense for it to be her bed. Ren hasn't slept in that bed in three years. She doesn't know whose bed this is, and in fact, she can't even remember laying down to go to bed yesterday.

Without sitting up to do so, she looks around. Whoever's house she's in is small, but cozy, and seems to be made up of just one big room. From what she can see from the bed, there's a little kitchen area with two chairs nestled close to a bar. A dresser near her, a sofa and chair in a corner, and a small room to the side that she assumes is probably a bathroom. Light seeps in though the thin white curtains covering the few windows in the house, bleeding through dimly enough that she can tell it's very early morning.

Ren rolls onto her right side. Leo's on the other side of her, blinking slowly up at the ceiling and not seeming to notice she's awake. She's acutely aware that she's naked, and there's the faintest traces of watery slick between her legs. Maybe she's just sweaty?

Closing her eyes, she curls up some and stretches a knee out. The sticky, rapidly cooling fluid runs down her ass, and her knee makes contact with his upper thigh. All she feels is his bare skin. Well. It's... pretty obvious what happened, but she's a little concerned that she can't remember having sex with him.

She hears him shift, and a moment later his fingers are in her hair, carding though her curls and lightly scratching her scalp. He breaks up tangles as he strokes through the brown mess, and it's so soothing that she falls back asleep without meaning to.

When Ren wakes back up, she's not sure how much time has passed. There's a lot more light pouring through the curtains, but it's still not quite past sunrise, she thinks. A few hours have gone by, maybe?

Leo's looking at her when she manages to get her eyes to open. His expression gives nothing away, but there's a certain softness in his warm brown eyes as he looks at her.

"Good morning," he says in a low tone, mindful not to be overly loud in the quiet of the early morning. He reaches out and gently strokes her jawline, thumb brushing along her cheek. It's an intimate gesture, and she'd probably be a little more receptive if she knew him better.

He stops at the curve of her jaw, just under her ear, and cups it. Pulling her forward in just the slightest, Leo leans in and presses a slow, easy kiss to her mouth. Ren hesitantly kisses back, but he doesn't seem to notice her pause.

Whatever he sees in her expression when he pulls away makes his brows furrow in just the slightest. "What's wrong?"

There's nowhere for her to go, and she's naked and doesn't want to pace around that way. So, with her cheeks flushing pink she asks him as straightforward as she can, "Did we... Did we have sex last night?"

Leo's brows come closer together. His confusion is clear. "Yes. At your insistence, as always. Do you not remember?"

As  _always_? "No," Ren tells him truthfully.

He's quiet, gives her a long look of concern while his eyes roam her face. The confusion on his face passes, his expression flattening back out into nothing. He rolls over onto his back, folds his hands together and tucks them behind his head. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asks, eyes back on the ceiling.

She thinks, though her head feels like a jumbled mess. "Um... You were rowing back to the shore of the mainland. You refused to execute me, said I hadn't done anything wrong. I could see the shore, and your siblings were waiting on you, but..." She shakes her head. Her brain is full of fog, and she can't get anything else out of it. It hurts her head when she tries to think harder. The other most recent memory she has is waking up this morning, but she gets the feeling that that isn't what he's asking for.

Leo exhales, slow and controlled. If she wasn't watching him so closely, she would have missed the way his jaw flexes, just once in tightly restrained anger. "That's it?"

"Yeah."

His eyes close, and she can tell he's keeping his breathing slow and deliberate. "They've taken two months from you, then."

"What do you mean?" she questions. Who? Months?

It doesn't take long for him to explain. His siblings weren't pleased in the slightest when they saw her alive, but he refused to let them touch her. He brought her here to keep her safe from the three, and things bloomed between the two of them pretty quick from there. Things were going okay until his siblings decided enough was enough and cornered her on the beach yesterday. One of his siblings, the silver haired sister, has the ability to mess with memories.

"But you were fine. Nothing seemed wrong, other than you being a little shaken up. I thought I'd gotten to you in time. Seems I was wrong, then."

The silence between them is heavy. She doesn't mean to, but she accidentally dozes off again and comes to a third time a little bit later. Not much time seems to have passed, there's only a little more sunlight than earlier. Stretching out and yawning, she looks back to him.

Leo's standing at the side of the bed he was previously occupying in a deep green pair of boxers, pulling his dark jeans on. His torso is bare, the warm olive skin of his chest dusted with sparse black hair. He pulls his pants up the rest of the way, his belt buckle clinging as it bounces. The sound from his belt must have been what roused her. There's something dark, angry in his face, but she can't read it. He doesn't look at her while buckling the belt, only paying attention when she asks him where he's going.

"Out front," he says simply and leaves through the door before she can ask anything else.

On the floor next to her, her clothes are in a heap. She doesn't recognize that exact skirt, but it fits when she pulls it on so it must be hers. There are two shirts, one that's probably hers and other cut for a man's shape. She pulls that one on and it's tight across her chest, but she doesn't really care. So what if he sees her nipples through her shirt? He's apparently seen a lot more than that.

After a quick trip to the side room to clean up the runny mess between her legs (the room does turn out to be a bathroom, though little and crowded), she heads out the front door.

Sitting in a hard plastic chair, Leo's got a cigarette in one hand while the other lays limply in his lap. Off on the horizon, Ren sees the island that she identifies as "Mother". It's much smaller from here than from the other cliff face from before, and she doesn't even have to go to the edge to see the beach below.

"Where'd you get that?" Ren asks, nodding towards the cigarette between his fingers.

"Magic," he replies, and she can't tell if he's serious. She doesn't see any tobacco or rolling papers though, so maybe he means it. Or maybe he has a pack of them prerolled somewhere and she didn't notice him bringing one out. That's the more likely answer, she thinks.

She only takes one drag off of it when he offers it out to her. The smoke drifts up into the air before dissipating into nothing, and she sits next to him on the little wooden porch, resting her head on his knee. It just feels right to do so. Leo curls his fingers into the hair at the top of her head and sighs, smoking billowing from his mouth and nose like a dragon.

 _It's only two months,_ he thinks. Just two.


	4. Chapter 4

He's warm against her back, wrapped around her with a hand curled on her belly and a leg between hers. Soft puffs of his breath tickle at her neck, where his face is buried. Again, they're naked, but she can't really bring herself to care right now. Ren relaxes against him, just because she can, even though the heat under the blanket rivals that of the heat in the room. He's comfortable to lay on.

Outside, there's just the barest hints of light coming though. It's either dawn or dusk, she's not sure. She could just be waking up from a nap for all she knows. Ren tries to think about what she did earlier that day, or last night, but her head feels like it's full of cotton and she can't really focus. There's a disjointed, fragmented memory of walking down the beach hand in hand with Leo, but it doesn't feel recent. Her head starts to pulse in pain the harder she fights to remember, so she stops trying to think about it. Shit, his siblings really did a number on her memory.

It's awkward with her left arm trapped under her body, but she maneuvers both hands enough to scrub at her eyes with the backs of her fingers. Something on her left hand catches on her brow and pulls at the hair and skin. Pulling her hand back, she looks at the thin silver band on her ring finger with confusion.

Leo chooses that moment to press a very pointed kiss to her skin, causing her to shiver as a pang of heat goes straight between her legs. "Good morning," he says soft in her ear, sitting up a little to kiss at her neck. His hand slides down to squeeze her thigh.

She tries to stutter out something, anything, but her head is cloudy now for a completely different reason. Every kiss and touch are placed in just the right way that sends sparks through her. Well, now she's confused  _and_  aroused, and most of the sounds coming from her are something akin to breathy moans. With his lips against her throat, he starts to slide his hand closer to the center of her thighs.

"Question," Ren blurts, trying to keep her breathing steady enough to speak. She holds her hand up enough for him to see it and wiggles her ring finger. "How long has that been here?"

Leo doesn't answer her, instead lets out a sound of amusement and nips at her neck, causing her to shudder. The kissing becomes more persistent, wet marks trailing on her skin. His roaming hand hesitates when she stutters out "N-no, for real."

There's confusion and concern in his eyes when he pulls back and she rolls to face him, but he sounds amused when he tells her "It's been there for nearly a year, darling. And you accuse  _me_  of being the forgetful one."

Ren sits up, tries to think though the sudden aching in her head. "But, that wasn't there yesterday, I don't think? And, you said yesterday I've only been here for two months?" She holds her forehead as a near blinding pressure builds up in her skull. "But that doesn't feel like yesterday." Ren thinks of the beach, certainly somewhere after what her brain tells her is "yesterday".

He's quiet, opting to pull her close and let her headache melt away. Whatever methods of seduction that he had planned seem to be stopped for the moment as he nestles her against himself. He lightly guides her head to his shoulder, massages at the base of her skull before he speaks.

"You've been here for almost two years, Renee." Disentangling his fingers from her hair, he shows her a matching band on his own left hand. "We've had these for close to a year now, in agreement to get married at some point. You don't remember?"

"I- I don't." She's certain that she's only known him about four or five days. Not these two years he's claiming.

With the side of her head still pressed against his shoulder, she can feel more than hear Leo's sigh. He's got no reason to lie to her, and well, his siblings have wiped her memory before. Maybe it's more of the same bullshit from the three.

Leo seems to agree when she quietly suggests so. With a clenched jaw, he instructs Ren get dressed, though she has absolutely no idea why. She doesn't recognize any of the clothes in the drawer that he says is hers, but it all fits her so it's undoubtedly hers. He pulls on a plain black shirt and dark denim, barely even bothers to buckle his belt with this sour look on his face. He distracted, doesn't notice her discomfort and hesitance as he leads her down the sandy slope of the cliff all the way down to the beach.

The expression is gone from his face by the time they reach the bottom to the flat expanse of the beach, and he absent-mindedly tangles his hand into hers, rubs her knuckle with a thumb. She wonders what's going though his head as he blankly gazes ahead.

A ways away, about an hour's walk, his siblings are gathered. Almost like they were waiting for him. The genderless one with the face Ren can't focus on keeps looking over their shoulder, nervously whispering to their sisters. Leo's tensed now. He squeezing her hand now, tightly enough it's uncomfortable, and she thinks his teeth are grit.

"Léonce," his silver hair sister greets, looking down her nose at him though he's taller, and that's when he release Ren's hand.

"Stay here," he tells Ren in a no-nonsense tone, and stalks forward to his siblings.

He talks low, stern. Shifty Eyes gets toe-to-toe with him immediately, Silver Hair continues looking down her nose at him, and the genderless one hesitates back away from the other three. Ren can't hear a thing any of them are saying.

She knows that Leo said to stay there, but she backtracks some and wanders down the waterline, picking up the occasional sand dollar and rinsing it in the brine lapping at her bare feet. They manage to not break up in her skirt pockets, which is like a plus. She enjoys shells and the likes, and hopes he'll tolerate her the collection she'll inevitably hoard. Watching him threaten his siblings isn't on her agenda today, so she ignores it for the most part.

The sisters' voices raise, though his doesn't. The genderless one remains silent, though some of his heat seems to be directed on them now. After a few more moments of what seems to be arguing, Leo gets his face so close to Shifty Eyes that their noses nearly touch. He says something slow and deliberate, and her lip curls back. She says something, it sounds like only one or two words, and crosses her arms like a petulant child.

Leo looks up when she's finished to where he left Ren, then scans the area for her. He coaxes her forward with he sees her and steps away from his siblings. When close enough, Silver Hair jabs her in the forehead with two fingers. Ren recoils, and Leo catches her with one arm, pulls her body to his own and keeps her held close.

"There. It should all be back tomorrow," Silver Hair says with a displeased look. "Make sure you get a good night's sleep, girlie, sleeping is the only way you're getting them back."

"Why sleeping?" Ren asks, gripping the back of his shirt. He keeps his hand firm on her hip.

"Your weak little mortal brains can't handle it awake. You'll process it when you're asleep. I'd much rather have just given them to you now, but my brother has decided that if you die because of us, he'll kill us." Silver Hair looks up him with distain. "I don't know why you're keeping her. She'll just die in fifty years anyway."

Without replying, Leo turns and guides Ren back up the beach with him. He leans over and kisses the side of her head as they walk.

"Didn't bring anything for you to collect shells with today," he says, like it's an apology.

Today? Well, seems like she's probably already got a collection growing somewhere in his- their?- home. "My skirt has pockets, I've got some already. The shells today are lackluster at best, though."

Though she can tell he's probably still angry, a smile quirks at the side of his lip.


	5. Chapter 5

She has a headache in the morning, which could be due to the wash of memories coming back, or from sleeping too long. It could be either, because the sun coming though is hot like it's midday. From the kitchen area, Leo says a soft "good morning", but doesn't speak to her further. Smells and sounds like he's cooking. Smells _good_.

Ren staggers off to the bathroom after tugging on a shirt and underwear. Goddamn, she really needs to stop drinking so much water before bed, she knows she won't get up in the night to pee and her bladder aches now.

With her elbows propped on her knees and her face in her hand, still on the toilet, Ren thinks. Focusing on her memories doesn't hurt as much now. She can comb through the past two years alright, but they're kind of blurry now, slightly disjointed and fragmented in some spots. Little holes where she knows some things should be, but just aren't.

Things seem more or less there, though. The first week together is still in tact, as is a faded recollection of sitting on his dick by day six. Lots of walks in the sand, looking though lots of old world magazines and books together. Even him asking her to marry him is, thankfully, still there and whole.

___  
_The ring he hands her is thin, slight scuffed but shiny. The silver has a good weight in her palm. It looks small enough that it could maybe fit on one or two of her fingers. It's one of the nicest gifts he's ever given her, really. She likes it._

_"Try it on, tell me if it fits," Leo says, though she can tell it's more a question than a statement._

_Ren slides it onto the index finger off her left hand first, and it's just a hair too tight. She can't get it past the last knuckle on her middle finger, but it fits like a charm on the ring finger. It feels nice, not too tight or loose, sits comfortably where she pushes it to._

_Her eyes shift to him when he moves and she blinks, once, twice, and she's not mistaken. There's a matching band on his own left hand that wasn't there a moment ago. She looks to his face._

_"Not now," he starts, "but one day."_

_"Are you asking me to marry you?" Ren questions, looking at him with her confusion well-masked._

_"Yes."_

_Oh. Kind of unexpected, actually. "Not that I'm saying no, because I'm not, but why so soon? We've hardly known each other a year, and I'm pretty terrible." She tries to smile at her own jest, but the look on his face makes her hesitate._

_He cups her jaw with one hand, strokes the skin. The look in his eyes is soft and sad, not at all like a man who's just asked someone to marry him. "You mortals live so fast," he tells her, low and with the faintest tinge of sorrow. "Barely a hundred years compared to my billions. I want you for as long as I can have you, and you humans seem to fight harder to make things work if there are rings involved."_

_The silence from her only seems to deepen the look in his eyes the longer it goes on. Leo's just about to drop his hand from her face when she leans into the touch._

_"I don't intend to go anywhere," she says, quiet in the space between them, tilting her face towards his._

_That makes his eyes brighten, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Just as always, the kiss they share tastes so, so sweet._  
___

"Are you dead in there?" Leo calls, and Ren shakes herself back into the current world.

She leans over and cracks the door open. "Decaying as we speak. This toilet will never be the same."

He laughs, says something to himself that she can't hear, and she closes the door. After finishing up what she's doing, Ren looks at herself in the mirror to see how bad her hair fluffed up during the night. Not too bad. She grabs a bar of soap to wash her face with and hesitates when she ties her hair back. Scowling at her reflection, she pops the bathroom door back open.

"When did I start looking so fucking old?" she asks loud enough for him to hear, touching her face. There's a wrinkle between her brow that she didn't notice yesterday, and her crows feet are much more prominent than she remembers them being.

"You're gorgeous, darling," Leo says, his tone only slightly patronizing. She can hear the smile in his voice.

Ren scoffs. "I've got fucking wrinkles. I'm twenty-five, I shouldn't look so old yet."

That draws another laugh from him. The smell wafting in from the kitchen makes her stomach grumble in a demand for food. "Is that still a thing, women pretending they're younger than they are? Though that died with the old world."

"Excuse me, you fuck?" Fucking _rude_.

Leo's trying and failing to mask a smile when she pokes her head out the door, and she can't quite keep her frown angry.

"It's not my fault you can't handle the fact that you're thirty-three," he says, holding his hands up in a defensive position. "Just keep pretending you're twenty-five, it's not a bother to me. Age is quite literally just a number to me at this point."

"I'm going to kill you in your sleep, like, you're the actual worst," Ren retorts, turning the light off behind her. She can wash her face later. "And what the fuck kind of number is that, thirty-three? What kind of bullshit is that? Sounds like the fakest thing to ever be fake."

Leo comes out from the kitchen area and sets his utensils down, meets her halfway across the house. He sweeps her into a deep, passionate kiss that has her cheeks flushed by the time he pulls away.

He holds her face in his hands. "Renee, the creases at the corners of your eyes do nothing to the fact that you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in this eternity I've lived."

The look in his eyes, the absolute conviction in his voice when he says it, leaves her breathless.

___

It becomes apparent over the course of the week that she's missing a lot more than initially thought.

Leo makes inside jokes to her that she doesn't understand, calls himself her husband though he said they weren't married yet. She chalks that last bit up to him being a God, maybe just the engagement rings make them married in his eyes. She rolls with it, she doesn't plan to go anywhere so she may as well take up the wife title now.

Small details don't add up. Little things like the way the clothes are put away in the dresser. The way the beach below looks. Topics he's sworn they've talked about a million times not sounding familiar in the slightest. Hell, even the way he wears his hair is unfamiliar. He always had it loose and flowing in what little recollections she has, but now he's got it in a thick bun on the back of his head and says he's done that for a long while now.

What really gets her is that he mentions her family as if he's met them. She definitely can't remember taking him home. Ren is positive she'd remember such a long trip, remember the new wrinkles in her brother's face. The only face she has for her brother is the sad look when she left home at twenty.

Leo talks about her brother's three children, and others that she is 100% certain don't exist. Her brother's wife was pregnant when Ren left home, and she never got to know the name or sex of the baby, but Leo talks mentions a Tabitha. Tabitha was what they were going to call the baby if it came out a girl. Ren never found out what it was, but Leo speaks of Tabitha and the children after her and Ren has no idea what he's going on about.

She relays this information to him, which draws a look of concern. He feels her forehead, checks her eyes to see if they're glazed. Asks her questions to see what is missing, there shouldn't be so many holes.

"When were you blooded?" he questions.

Her eyebrow goes up. "What the fuck is that?"

Leo repeats his question a little slower, but she still doesn't understand what he's going on about.

"Something simpler, then," Leo says, guiding her to sit in the chair, while he takes the couch. He's masking his emotions, but she knows his tells. "When's your birthday? How old are you?"

"Early November. The sixth. And I mentioned earlier this week when you decided to call me old, I'm twenty-five."

He shakes his head faintly, looking displeased. "Something else. How long have you and I been together?"

"Two years, give or take a few months? That's what you said about a week ago." She feels like she's giving the wrong answer, though there aren't multiple choice to the equation. Ren watches his face go from displeasure to pure  _anger_  at her response.

He gets up fast enough that he knocks the dingy couch pillows to the floor, his shin collides with the coffee table hard enough that it shoves it back and nearly topples, but he storms to the door and grabs the handle without paying it mind.

"Leo!" Ren calls, getting to her feet. He stops and turns to her, the fury singing in his features. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Ten years," he spits, dropping his hand. "Ten years they've taken from you, Renee."

Temporarily abandoning his plan to leave and do god-knows-what, he comes back to her and takes her by the shoulders. Ren can tell he's trying to tamp down his anger while talking to her. "Three years ago, I blooded you. Essentially, that means you drank an amount of my blood which granted you power. You're functionally immortal as a result. You're not twenty-five, Renee, you're thirty-three, you stopped aging at thirty."

He pulls in a deep breath while she stands there, silent, trying to process what was just said to her. "We've been together for ten years now. They've taken the last eight years, and reset you to believe it's after they restored your memory, when they pulled this shit the second time."

Ren finds nothing to say. Leo squeezes her shoulders, kisses her forehead before releasing her. "Blooding you essentially makes you "mine". An attack on you is an attack on me, and I assure you, this is an attack. I'm dealing with this once and for all. Stay here."

"Where are you going?" She reaches out, as if it touch him, but hesitates and lets her hand drop.

"I'm sorting this out for good. Don't worry if I'm not back for a few days. I love you."

Leo barely even waits for her to respond before he leaves, closing the door behind himself in a way that feels very final. Ren stays in place for a while. She feels unsure of what to do, anxious at his sudden departure. Confused and thrown off, definitely, from the revelation of all the information he gave her. Ten years together? He "blooded" her? She feels kind of light-headed and dumbstruck. Fuck, she's probably in shock right now.

Numbly, she crosses the room and fixes the coffee table that he knocked crooked.


	6. Chapter 6

It's a long, nerve-wracking week before he returns. Leo comes through the door as Ren's making lunch. He sweeps her into his arms and kisses her long and hard, tells her he missed her and smooths his hands down her back. He doesn't talk about why he was gone so long, or what he did, but Ren isn't really feeling all that inclined to ask when he kisses her again.

They spend the afternoon pacing the beach hand in hand. They don't talk much, and he spends a lot of time looking out towards Mother. There's something in his expression that Ren can't read and it's worrying her, but she didn't want to ask.

The rest of her memories come back after she sleeps, accompanied with a splitting headache. But like before, the memories are holey and missing large chunks that feel like they should have something there. He purses his lips when she tells him as much, but doesn't say anything about it. She's got enough still intact that it shouldn't be too large of an issue. Leo can fill in some of the blanks.

He was right, at least, about her brother. Seven children total, and the one that hadn't been born yet was indeed named Tabitha. Ren and Leo have made the trip to see them, and she's held every child, hugged her brother fiercely. But Caleb's face is just a blur in her mind.

They try to get life back to normal, though it's hard on them both. Leo's been betrayed by his family three times now simply because he wouldn't execute an innocent woman and dared to fall in love with her. Ren wakes up nervous now, recounts all of the previous day's events just in case more weeks, months, years have been stolen from her without reason.

One evening, as Leo's sitting behind her on the bed, meticulously braiding her wet curls, she broaches a question.

"I don't think I've ever actually asked before," Ren starts, trying to keep her head still for him. "But what exactly did I do to make them want me dead in the first place? Even when it was happening, I didn't know what was going on."

Leo hums, sounding amused about it. "My sister stole that from you as it was happening. The three twisted their words to make you sound like you'd done something wrong. Something about you lying to the four of us, cheating us out of something. You happened to stumble into the wrong place at the wrong time and they didn't like it. That's what you truly did "wrong". The story played out from there."

"They demanded my death, and then you decided not to blow my brains out?"

A soft kiss presses to the back of her neck, making her shiver. "Don't forget the part where the foolish God fell for the beautiful mortal woman. That's always a favorite in the story books."

She smiles. "Not so mortal anymore, remember?"

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all she did? She didn't run her mouth off, make threats to the wrong people? It's hard to believe, but people are often killed for being in the wrong place at bad times, and besides, Leo has no reason to lie to her about it.

Still, she mulls over this new information while he continues braiding her hair. Leo plants another kiss to the back of her neck when he finishes, drawing her out of her thoughts. There's a third kiss, a fourth, and she turns around to catch the fifth with her lips.

 

 

Leo hasn't been in bed when Ren wakes up in the middle of the night, lately.

Most the time, he's not even in the house. She often finds him outside, down below, kneeling in the ocean and looking like he's praying. He's always facing Mother. She must be listening, because even when it should be low tide, the water will be up around his legs and staying impossibly still.

His jeans are always draped over the porch railing, dried stiff with sand and salt water come morning. Ren doesn't really know what he's doing down there, and Leo won't answer her questions about it. He seems off, not himself lately.

Even his siblings seem off. Only Shifty Eyes and the genderless one are ever out anymore. Leo's already assured her that he didn't kill Silver Hair, but Ren hasn't seen her since before this last time she stole Ren's memories.

( _"I didn't kill her," Leo says quietly after Ren finally cracks and asks him what he did. "I can't say that I didn't put my hands on her, but I certainly didn't kill her." And that's all he'll say on the matter._ )

Leo feels strange to her now, more distant. She catches sight of him meeting with his two other siblings often, though the two stay far away from Ren and Leo's home. He doesn't deny meeting with them, but refuses to answer about  _why_  they were meeting and what was talked about. Ren accidentally raises Leo's ire by not dropping it the first few times, and his quiet, frosty anger isn't something she wants to deal with.

He barely even waits for her to be asleep anymore before leaving their bed, spending all night up until sunrise kneeling in the water, stone still. Sure, he doesn't need to sleep, but he does occasionally and even if he doesn't sleep, he  _used_  to like just laying with her while  _she_  slept. Waking to a cold bed makes her feel lost. Like they're drifting even further apart and she doesn't know what's wrong or how to help fix it.

Ren's just started to doze off one night, with Leo's warmth pressed to her back. He didn't stay fully clothed to cuddle with her this time, he at least kicked off his jeans. From the sound of his breathing, Ren's certain that he may have accidentally went to sleep. She doesn't mind. Not one bit.

But he gets up after a while, causing her to jolt out of the sleep that had just started taking her. Ren can feel his eyes on her back as she gets dressed with him, pulling on the barest amount before escaping to the bathroom. She at least gets the tap running before the floodgates open, to mask the sound of her crying into her hands.

All she wants to know is what's wrong. Why he's pulling away from her, why he's praying for all hour of the night, why he's willingly conversing with siblings that he openly hates. Has Ren done something wrong? Is the drama of his siblings hating her finally catching up, become too much for him?

She can't even pretend like this was sudden. The rift began opening shortly after her memories were restored this last time, a few months ago. That's when he started becoming more distracted. That was the small wedge that pushed between the two of them, as his habit of thinking all night bled into daylight hours.

Then the distance formed. After came the praying, his lack of touch. He hardly even kisses her anymore, doesn't smile at her much. Time spent in each other's presence is usually silent. They haven't been intimate in weeks. They used to walk the beach together almost every day, and now he doesn't seem to have the time for her. Ren puts forth as much effort as she can to spend time with him and Leo just... brushes her off.

Leo's waiting for her outside the door after she's done crying and cleaned up her face. It was all for nothing, because she starts sobbing again the moment he closes his arms around her and her head connects with his chest. He presses his lips to her hair.

After a few moments of holding her, he guides her backwards and walks her to the bed. Leo curls in behind her, balancing on the edge as he presses kisses to the base of her skull. Eventually, the crying exhausts her. She falls asleep like that, fully clothed, with Leo warm against her back.

He's gone when she wakes up, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5/17/18
> 
> Sorry to anyone who just got a new chapter notification, I accidently published an unfinished chapter that I was trying to save


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been taking me so long to update! I have this system that I'm trying to stick to which is basically, I won't publish a chapter unless the chapter after it is finished just to give me a kind of backlog. I've been struggling a lot with ch 8 and since it wasn't done, I didn't want to publish ch 7. But 8 is now completed. Ch 9 is also completed, but I'm going to stagger the releases by a few days. ANYHOW without anymore delay, read on!

Ren feels like she's running out of options of what to do. Leo won't tell her what the fuck is wrong, and she can't find whatever is pushing them apart. She's starting to get more angry than sad about it now.

He's still so cold to her. Out of pettiness, anger, whatever it is, Ren returns the gesture. Leo seems a little surprised at _her_ coldness, but doesn't say anything about it. How can he, without admitting he's doing the same fucking thing to her? She misses him though, so much. But she's certainly more angry than sad, and though it makes her feel sick to be so unkind to her husband, she stops trying to make an effort to converse or even casually touch.

Time spent in each other's company is more often than not silent and apart, now.

One afternoon, she leaves without telling him where she's going. Doesn't talk to him at all actually. She takes her little shell collecting bag with her, though she's got no intentions of bringing anything back with her. It's more to mislead him on what she's going out to do. Leo doesn't ask anyway, but if he did, she'd tell the truth.

The sun is hot on her back, but the water is cool on her bare feet as she treks down the waterline. She ties her hair back, to keep it from sticking to her neck with sweat. The bag hangs limply from where it's tied into a beltloop of her shorts, bouncing off of her leg with each step she takes. Fucking Leo. She feels like him now, sneaking around, not making her intentions clear. Lying by default. Half truths can be lies, and hiding things, keeping secrets, it's as good as lying in her eyes.

It's an hour, probably more, before she sees shapes in the distance. Her skin is starting to burn now but she doesn't let that stop her. She's got things to do.

Shifty Eyes and the genderless one regard Ren with caution and confusion when she approaches. Both seem curious at the lack of their brother's appearance. As always, Silver Hair is nowhere to be found. Ren feels stupid for having come out here in the first place, but she's running out of ideas.

In all these years, Leo has only ever mentioned their names in passing. She knows Silver Hair is called Fen. Shifty Eyes is Violette, but only goes by Vio. He's only said the genderless one's name a few times, generally preferring to call them Archangel in a sarcastic tone. They probably know her name.

"Vio," Ren starts, watching the woman cock her head in just the slightest. "What's his problem?"

Vio glances to their sibling, then shrugs. Brushes her dark hair out of her face. "He's just like that, haven't you noticed?"

"Not them. Leo."

Vio shoots another look to her sibling. The corner of her lip curls in just the slightest, and the faint smile looks so malicious. Every color that her eyes shift through are unnatural. "He hasn't told you?"

Ren crosses her arms. The skin is red, hurts like hell already, and she's probably going to be blistered by the time she gets back home. "Do you think I'd be willingly standing here talking to you if I knew why there was such a stick up your brother's ass? You guys kind of had him try to execute me because you didn't like my face or whatever."

"Yeah, we're mostly over that. It was stupid," Vio admits with another shrug. "We just hate you now because you stole our brother from us."

"I'm not stopping him from seeing you. It's completely up to him whether or not see he's you. But for real. What's his fucking deal?"

"He'd tell you if he wanted you to know," Archangel says quietly, hands in their pockets. 

Ren looks just past their shoulder and looks at them from the corner of her eye. It's the only way she can kind of focus on them. They're so pale, paler than her. Paler than an albino, even. But that's really all she can make out.

"Kind of hard on that end if he won't even talk to me." Ren knows it's stupid of her to be out here. She's revealing weaknesses between herself and Leo, leaving herself open to be attacked by the two. "But he talks to you guys again. I wanna know what's going on with him."

Shaking his head, Archangel repeats, "He'd tell you if he wanted you to know, girl."

It takes a lot of willpower not to grit her teeth. "You're doing him no favors by keeping secrets, I assure you. It's not like I'm asking for your cosmic knowledge, or threatening your lives or anything. I just want to know why my husband is acting like an asshole."

Vio grins.

Ren only lasts another ten minutes before she leaves. The two only give her a runaround, refusing to answer her questions and picking at her like children. They won't budge at all, though her question is simple. Petty little fucks, that's all they are. She huffs as she walks away, holding onto her shell back so it stops smacking into her thigh. It was a wasted trip. The sunburn wasn't worth it. 

Much like she thought, she's nearly blistered by the time she gets home and comes inside. Leo does a double take at her bright red skin as he watches her from the kitchen. He's quiet as her eyes water and she whimpers, pulling her shirt off as gently as she can. The natural ghost white of her body only serves to enhance just how fucking red she is. Oh hell, even the skin that wasn't exposed directly to the sun is a rosy pink. Why does she have to be so white? Fuck her European genes, and fuck whatever's left of Europe. 

Behind her, she hears the sound of Leo's boots on the floor and the front door opening, then closing. Ren feels an internal twinge of anger at him, but lets it go. Maybe she should soak in a cold bath. That's a thing, isn't it? Her brother would always have her run cold water over her hands whenever she burned herself cooking, to draw out the heat. Maybe it's the same premise with a sunburn?

The front door comes back open, closes, and his soles are heavy as he makes his way across the room. Leo's hand is surprisingly cool on her lower back, given the warmth in their home and the staggering heat swirling outside.

Ren yelps in pain the moment he touches the back of her neck, and she pulls away. Leo stays in place, hand hovering at the hight of her neck with a crudely split piece of their aloe vera plant between his fingers. Oh. No wonder the spot feels sticky. Hesitantly, she backs towards him, standing back where she was a moment ago. Ren's not going to be able to get her neck herself, and probably not her shoulders either. Hopefully he'll do that too. He places his hand back on her and lightly begins to slather the plant on her.

"Leo?"

"Mm?"

Leo hasn't actually said any words to her in at least two days. Just replies to her in grunts, gestures, facial expressions. At this point, she expects as much. But she murmurs out "Thank you," anyway as he starts working his way down her arms with the aloe. He doesn't have to be doing this, she can reach that far.

As expected, he doesn't say anything. After a moment though, she feels him press the barest hint of a kiss to the side of her head.  
_____

Ren can feel Leo's eyes boring into her back when he comes inside the next afternoon. She's got the other half of the aloe in her hand, chilled from sitting in the fridge overnight, biting back cries of pain as she tries to get the back of her neck. It hurts her a lot to move her shoulders, and somehow the chill of the medicine makes it hurt that much more.

She turns, hoping to ask Leo for his assistance. His face is almost perfectly neutral, but she reads something in it. After ten years together, even after having her memories wiped three times and returned badly twice, she can catch the tightly controlled rage in his eyes.

"What?" Ren asks, gritting her teeth in pain a moment later as she slowly lets her arm down. "If you have something to say, say it."

"Don't talk to them again." Leo's tone is flat, his words final like an angry parent giving their child a command.

So he went and saw his siblings again today, it seems. Makes sense why he left when it was barely sunrise. He can't get sunburns, can't really be dehydrated, but the sun and accompanying heat sure can still bother him. Ren wonders what Vio and Archangel told him. Everything, probably.

"Frankly, I don't really feel like you're in a position to be giving me orders." She'd probably be crossing her arms right now, if it didn't hurt so fucking much to do so.

He draws in a deep breath, and she sees him clench his fists in her peripheral vision. "Renee. I'm asking you as your husband not to do it."

Ren scowls at him. "Yeah, that's wonderful and all, but you haven't been acting like it for a good while now, so what authority do you have to pull that card on me?"

That strikes a nerve in him, she can tell though his expression doesn't change. The air inside feels much heavier than it did moments before, and Leo's posture seems a little more rigid.

"Do you not remember that they tried to have you murdered simply because you happened upon us? Do you not recall that my sister wiped parts of your memory three times?" He cocks his head slightly. "Has she done it again? Because I'm certain that you're smart enough to understand that going around them alone after all they've done to you is a stupid thing to do."

Without anything better to say, Ren tilts her head and turns up her nose at him like a defiant child. If he thinks he can tell her what to do, he's sorely fucking mistaken.

That pisses him off. Leo strides forward, and is gentle but firm when he takes hold of her sunburnt face. He looks her in the eyes, holds her there so that she can't look away.

"Don't go near them again," he tells her, and sunburn be dammed, she shoves him away and storms out into the afternoon heat topless, aloe vera still in her hand.


	8. Chapter 8

The silence in the following days is much, much worse than before. Leo's angry now, frustrated at her. Ren isn't very fucking happy with him either, so she lets the quiet between them stretch on. If he doesn't want to talk to her, fine. She'll just use it to her advantage.

It makes it easier for her to go places without him asking at least.

Her skin in still a little tender from being burned, so she's been avoiding the sunlight as much as possible. The skin has started peeling in some places, and from what she's gathered in blurry recollections of past conversions, she probably won't get skin cancer. His weird magical god powers shield her from shit like that.

But with her skin still in such a delicate state, she avoids the sunlight for the most part. Under the cover of clouds and sunsets, Ren tests the extent of just how far he'll go in ignoring her. Leo gives her questioning looks the first few days, but after about a week of her returning the silent treatment, he doesn't even bother to look at her anymore. He leaves some aloe leaves on the fridge for her though and it throws her off. It's an unexpected kindness, and she begrudgingly accepts it.

As the usual, Leo's out kneeling in the water by the time the sun is setting. He pays her no mind when he hears the front door close, doesn't even raise his head as her feet thud heavily on the wooden deck. Even so, she still takes the long way around the sand dunes just in case he decides that knowing her location is suddenly important. Last thing she needs is him interfering. She's unwilling to tell him the truth about where she's going, and she doesn't have a good lie thought out.

Navigating in the dark isn't the best thing, considering venomous snakes live in the grassy dunes and the fact that she's skilled enough to trip over her own goddamn feet in _good_ lighting. But Ren waited for the moon to be full, so she'll have enough light to get her back at least.

For a while, she isn't even sure where she's going. She doesn't know exactly what direction she's headed, since she doesn't have a compass and was never trained to like, read the fucking stars or something. All Ren knows is that she's headed further up the beach. Further down? It doesn't matter.

It's a long, quiet walk. Well, not very quiet. The bugs are loud, the wind in the grass adding to the ambiance. The ocean of course, unendingly churning and splashing up against old world piers that have long rotted. But other than that... There isn't much. But its nice background noise while she thinks about how much of an idiot she is.

She's going on what little bit of information she has left. As she was storming off a while ago, Vio had happily called after Ren to "talk to Fen!" And... with little else to work with, it's all Ren has. So, she's gonna talk to Fen. Try. She's gonna _try_ to talk to Fen.

There are plenty of problems with this. One, namely, being Fen herself. Fen kind of hates her. The second problem is Ren has no fucking idea where she's going. She's got an old, grainy memory that wasn't returned right. Leo taking her on a long walk down the beach, in the wintertime maybe. He points at a cabin, more of an over-glorified shack than anything, tells her to avoid it at all costs. He pulls her sleeve and coaxes her to go back the way they came. That's where Vio, Archangel, and Fen live. The memory goes on, him talking about the four of them all living there together after the bombs dropped and the old world ended.

But she has what she needs of it. A vague direction on the beach, far away, and a rough recollection of what the cabin looked like.

So she steels herself and walks.

 

 

Frankly, the cabin looked better in her memory.

Ren assured at least that the others aren't here. She passed them as she made her way here, though she was on higher ground than them. Vio and Archangel didn't catch sight of her, she thinks. Fen wasn't with them as is the new norm, so hopefully she's here and in a talking kind of mood. Hopefully not in a mind wipe-y kind of mood.

The outside is much more worn than her poor memory showed. Like there's been no kind of upkeep in years. There probably hasn't been any. Leo moved up to their little house on the cliffs many, many years before their unfortunate first meeting, and it seems none of the others have bothered to take up the mantle of keeping the place looking livable. It looks like one good wind could knock the place down, a stray spark could turn it to ash. She'll keep that in mind for later use, if she's ever feeling vindictive.

She knocks, more out of common courtesy than anything. Wouldn't want anyone to burst into her own home without knocking. There's a confused grunt from inside. Some shifting. Ren takes that as her cue and lets herself in.

Inside is in just as poor of a condition as the exterior. It looks like a big open floor plan like her and Leo's place, but with a lot less elbow grease put into the place. It's poorly lit, making everything look washed out. Everything is dirty, stained, the floor under her shoes even feels kind of sticky. The furniture is in tatters, any and all cloth torn in places, and the kitchen chairs all look half rotted. The beds huddled into one of the corners of the house are all graying and splotched with stains. Fuck, these guys aren't doing that great without Leo. Maybe that's why they hate Ren; because he has a wife now, he doesn't have time to take care of their slobby, lazy asses.

Fen is curled in a bed nestled into the corner, looking confused, pissed, and amused all at once. The sheets under her look worse than the other three beds combined.

"Fuck are you doing here?" She brushes a mess of unkempt silver hair from her face.

"I need to talk to you."

Fen scoffs. "Us? Talk? You're fucking lucky I'm not blasting your memory to hell and back right now."

Ren nods and tucks her own hair behind her ears. "Look, I get that you guys don't like me. But I'm not here about me, I'm here about Leo."

The atmosphere in the room is immediately heavy, thick. Fen looks like she's got something sour in her mouth, and her lip curls back when she spits, "Yeah? What about that fuck?"

"I just want to know what's wrong with him." She'd sit in a chair maybe if she didn't think it would break. Or the couch if there weren't springs poking out. "He's not himself."

"That's rich. You think after what he did to me for your sake that I want to help him? Or you?"

Ren crosses her arms over her chest. "He... never did actually tell me what he did to you. He said he didn't kill you, but-"

"You wanna know what he did to me?" Fen snarls, and the pure venom in her voice makes the hairs on Ren's neck stand up.

Fen gets up, and Ren can tell right away that something is wrong with the other woman. She takes a moment to even get her feet over the edge of the bed, struggles to stand and whimpers like she's in pain. She doesn't hold herself right. She's hunched a little, grips onto a rotting bedpost just to keep herself upright.

"After our last fun game of 'memory keep-away', he came here and gave me what he thought I deserved. Leo dearest caught me by surprise and beat me within an inch of my fucking life, which should say something seeing as were fucking gods. And every time I healed, he'd do it again." Fen's knees tremble with the exertion of keeping herself upright "It went on for days, until my body was so weak and fucking crippled that I couldn't heal myself again, let alone get off the floor. He never said a fucking word to me the entire time. Just a cycle of him healing his split knuckles and waiting for me to be able to take a punch again."

Ren stands mutely, leaning back against the front door as Fen collapses back into her bed.

"I've been like this for _months_ ," Fen hisses.

"I'm sorry for what he did to y-"

"Apologies don't do a goddamn thing," Fen replies, her anger fading with her energy. "If you wouldn't have shown up, or if he'd had the balls to blow your fucking brains out like he was supposed to, none of this would have happened."

With nothing to say to that, Ren merely murmurs, "I just want Leo to be happy." _With me,_ she doesn't add.

Silver hair falls as Fen shakes her head. "You're not getting a fucking thing out of me. I know exactly what's going on, he's told me everything, but I'm not telling you shit. You don't deserve it." And just like that, Fen's anger dissipates completely and she's all sweet smiles. "You know what? Talk to Mother. She'll probably know even more than me."

Ren's brows come together. "But... How? How would I even do that?"

"Not my problem. Now get the fuck out, because if I can hobble my ass over to you, it's game over for you, girlie."

Ren gets the fuck out, mostly so Fen doesn't hurt herself trying to get up a second time. She never thought she'd feel pity for Fen of all people, but she never expected that Leo had done _that_ to her. His sister is a Bitch with a capital B, but... shit, even with all she's done to Ren, she didn't deserve something like that.

 

 

Leo isn't at the water when she returns, and it makes her heart jump with a sudden anxiety. There isn't enough time between there and the front door to make up a lie about where she was, and she doesn't want to deal with anymore of his anger. He's fucking scary when he's angry, and visiting Fen certainly constitutes his full anger. It'll be a small blessing if he isn't inside, but where else could he have gone? She would have run into him on the beach if he'd gone that way.

Just her stroke of luck. Leo's behind the bar in the kitchen area, chopping something up finely on a cutting board. He seems surprised to see her. The chopping resumes, and he gives the bed, then her, a quick glance. _I thought you'd be in bed._

Ren doesn't meet his eyes when she gets changed into some pajamas. She leaves sand all over the floor, deciding it's a problem for her to deal with tomorrow. He'll just track more inside later, probably. But eventually she has to turn around, and he catches her eyes when she does.

He glances at the door, then back to her with is brow raised. _Where have you been?_ the look asks. Ren doesn't answer him however, instead choosing to park her ass on the couch after taking a book off of the small bookshelf by the bathroom. She can feel his eyes on her as she curls up and flips to the last page that she read. Without him willing to speak, he can do nothing but convey things through gestures and facial expressions. And oops, its so easy to miss those questions and such if she isn't looking at him.

It grows later and later, and Ren starts to droop. When she eventually heads to sleep, he takes her place on the sofa with a book of his own. Asshole doesn't turn out any of the lights out, so she ends up waking up frequently.

At one point, he's just gone. It's still dark out. Where he could have gone isn't a concern of hers at the moment, not when sleep clouds her eyes and she can't even keep them open. But he wakes her later with the screen door slamming shut, and the door following a moment later. It jolts her right up, and she watches him as he seats himself at the bar. Her heart is racing from the fright. The sun is high and bright, and she feels a little ill.

He sits with his head in his hands, hair down and loose for once. Leo won't look at her, not even when she hoarsely calls his name. She coughs, drinks out of the glass of water on the nightstand, and tries again. "Leo?"

From his seat, he runs his hands down his face. He plants his hand on the counter and turns to face her, looking stern and a little scared all at once.

"Stop trying to get yourself killed," he bites out before facing away, cradling his face once again. She can hear him sigh into his palms.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here have two chapters in one day

There's a lot of time to think after her visit with Fen. Ren spends a lot of time musing over what her husband did, thinks about confronting him for going overboard. It's probably not worth it anyway, he'll just look at her and say nothing. There's also the other thing. Mother. _Can_ Ren talk to her? Is she just an embodiment of the island, or is the island actually her, or...? None of it makes sense. Maybe she's still up in the cosmos or wherever they're from, Leo never really talked about his life before getting stuck down on Earth so she isn't sure. It's one of her last leads.

Probably _the_ last lead. Really, Ren's got nothing else after this. There's only this one more plan, and she's certain it'll go about as well as the last two plans. After that, as much as it kills her to think this way, if nothing else fixes, she's cutting her losses and leaving. She can't do this much longer. Living with a husband that won't even look at her most days, the lack of affection, the total absence of almost all love on his part... She can't fucking do it. No matter how much she loves Leo, she can't be with him if he can't even _pretend_ to like her. Or fucking talk to her, for that matter.

The first part of the finer details comes easily. Ren puts herself in a bad mood, lets it get progressively worse over the course of the week. She even makes herself cry a few time, reminiscent of the beginning of this whole mess. All the while, she ensures Leo is around for the worst of it, catching her slamming cabinets in her manufactured rage and the tail end of crying fits. Most of the time she just cries in the bathroom and will come out with red eyes, but occasionally she'll wait in bed and scurry off to the bathroom while futilely swiping at the wet mess around her eyes. He never says anything about it, but it's not hard to see the concern in his face.

Finally, the day comes for her to enact the next intended part of this. She's a major wreck for the entire day, spends most of it sobbing in the bathroom. At some point she pushes herself to far and accidentally causes herself to puke from over exertion, and when she comes out to re-hydrate, there's a cooling cup of mint tea waiting on the counter with Leo nowhere in sight. Probably went out when she was brushing her teeth. The loud rush of the tap would have masked the sound of the door opening and closing. Ren drinks the tea to soothe the stomachache she gave herself, curled up at the bar while she watches Leo come and go. He's doing something productive today, but she doesn't know what.

Sunlight begins to fade as time wears on. Slowly but surely, the blue begins to fade and other colors bleed into the sky. She cracks open the blinds on the window above the kitchen sink when she's sure Leo isn't standing near it, watching the colors shift as the day gets ready to end. Hopefully Leo will come inside tonight instead of going straight from working to praying. She'll have to start her plan all over if he doesn't come in, and it'll be really fucking rough to do this to herself a second time, and it may not work a second time, either.

He comes in, though. Idling around the kitchen, he makes something light for dinner and seems a bit pleased when she eats something. It's been the most kindness she's seen in a while, and it's the best she could have hoped for. Not only is everything going accordingly, but it's nice to feel her husband's hands lingering over her skin for the first time in weeks, possibly months.

When the lasts dredges of sunlight seeps down into the horizon, he pulls himself off of the couch. Like clockwork, he heads for the door with intent in his eyes. Now, she has to act now. Ren sits up from her side of the bed where she's been for hours, and calls to him.

"Leo," and her voice is so broken and miserable that she doesn't even recognize it.

He hesitates and turns to her, and Ren reads something akin to curiosity and confusion in the furrow of his brow. When tears begin to prick at her eyes, he fully faces her. He still says nothing.

"Please don't go," she whimpers out, and her voice cracks pitifully on 'go'.

Still standing at the door, he falters yet again, his hand unsure on the knob.

Much to her pleasure, his hands drops from the handle, and he kicks his boots off. After they're tucked by the door, he comes to the bed.

His side of the bed has remained unused for such a long time, but he settles into the mattress and accepts it when she curls herself against his side. Ren rests her head on his chest, puts a leg over his while her palm flattens between his pecs. He's warm, and the sound of his heartbeat under her ear calms her in the sweetest of ways.

Leo's hand comes up to rub at her arm, the warmth of his palm feeling divine against the chill lingering to her. He strokes her upper arm lightly, soothingly, ignores her peeling skin even though he's causing more to come free under his fingers. She grips at his shirt, balling her hand into the fabric at his chest as she fights down a very real bout of tears threatening to bubble up. Nothing like the crocodile tears she's been spilling all weak. It's real, and she realizes just how touch starved she's been as his hand comes to rest on her shoulder.

For once, he seems content to stay. His breathing begins to slow after an hour of laying together, and it isn't much longer after that that he drifts off. She says his name, once, quiet, but he doesn't stir. As a God he doesn't _need_ to sleep, but things start to slow down after such a long time without rest. Like an old machine that just needs to be turned off to cool down for a while. 

As much as it pains her, Ren climbs out of bed once she's assured he's good and out. Though he hasn't slept in a while, she estimates she's only got about an hour before he wakes back up and sees that she isn't there anymore. It takes her a full 30 seconds to open the front door so that it doesn't squeak, and just as long to close it for the same reason. It remains silent inside, so she assumes he slept through.

The deck squeaks as she tries to quietly make her way across. The wood is several hundred years old, but Leo does magical upkeep on it, and the house, to keep them pristine. She'll maybe leave him a passive-aggressive note to take care of it sometime, since they're still not on speaking terms. The long set of stairs leading down to the entryway of beach squeal and groan as she goes down. Either she's gotten fatter, or he hasn't been doing a lot of care to the structures.

Sand coats her bare feet as she heads to the area of the shore that's just below their porch. Maybe she'll get the best results if she does this where he prays. Ren looks up, adjusts herself accordingly to where she usually sees him sitting, and finally decides that where she's at is exact enough.

She kneels at the edge of the water just like she's seen him do for months. The warm water of the ocean seeps between her thighs and soaks her underwear immediately, washes over her maroon skirt and even wets the hem of her shirt. The waves don't stop around her the way they do with him, but it'd reassuring that at least neither of them are waterproof. Ren turns herself just a little, enough to where she's facing Mother fully. Even with miles and miles between here and there, Ren swears that she can see the single palm tree shimmying in the wind.

"Look," she starts aloud, just quiet enough to be hidden under the roar of the high tide. "I don't really do this. I believe in gods to the point that I acknowledge that you exist, and that's about all. I mean, the acknowledgement is blatant, I've been blooded by and am married to your... son? Whatever you guys are to each other. Either way, I don't do this praying bullshit. But ma'am, if you're listening to me, I need to talk to you about Leo."

A voice answer her. It's too loud, reverberating in her skull, and she has to resist the urge to cover her ears. It's feminine, old. Wise. "And what has Leo done to warrant you coming to me directly?"

"I don't know what's wrong with him," Ren answers truthfully, watching the island. "I've run out of options. There's something wrong with him and he won't tell me. I've already tied asking him a thousand times, I've gone to Vio, Fen, and Archangel. I got nothing from them. But you, he talks to you daily. He talks to you more than he talks to me. You've got to know something."

"Then perhaps you aren't worthy of him."

Ren scowls, does her best not to curl her lip. "I'm here for advice, not to have my mother-in-law tell me I'm not good enough for her son."

There's nothing for a long time. Ren sits there, waiting, watching the island with a stone face. She's witness this kind of song and dance before, the mother butting heads with the person dating their kid. Her sister-in-law's mom hated her brother for the longest time. It's a game of egos, and Ren's going to be the bigger bitch. Probably not the best thing to do for her plan, but whatever, she doesn't think this is going to work anyway.

Finally, the voice rattles in her skull again. "He has to prove himself, and by default, you."

She frowns at this, shivers at the water soaking her clothing. "What does that even mean?"

It feels _weird_ to have someone laugh in her head that isn't her. "It means exactly what I said. He's got to prove himself. You have to be proven."

"I don't know what that means!" And Ren's too loud now, he could definitely hear her if he's awake. "What the fuck is there to prove? Who are we proving whatever to, you? Fuckin'... are all of you gods such cryptic assholes?"

All she gets is another laugh in response. Ren tries for a while longer to squeeze something, _anything_ out of Mother, but the woman answers her no more.

"Fine. You've just made up my fucking mind. I planned to leave your fucking son, you know that? And you just made up my mind. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right the fuck here. If you and the others want to be gigantic cunts and want to see Leo unhappy, fine, that's on you. But personally, I think his, and our happiness is worth the fight. So, uh, fuck all of you. You especially, because even with everything she's put me through, at least Fen wasn't so goddamn cryptic."

She rises from the water, trying and failing to contain a snarl. Fuck all of them. She'll fix then her own fucking self with every bit of blood, sweat, and tears she's got. The only people she has to prove herself to his, well, herself, and Leo. Nobody else. Certainly not a cryptic, bitchy cosmic mother-in-law.

It's a challenge, but she forces a calm as she heads inside. She's dripping water and sand all over the floor, trailing puddles in her wake, but it's a small kindness to find that Leo is still sleeping peacefully in the middle of their bed.

Ren showers and discards her wet, dirty clothes in the bottom of the tub when she's finished. Her skin still smells salty even after bathing, but there isn't much she can do about that other than slather herself in lotion. Which she probably should do, because of the sunburn and all. She's too fucking lazy though.

He's still asleep when she gets our, and for the first time in a long fucking while, she gets to sleep next to her husband.


	10. Chapter 10

"You've been busy," Leo says as he comes in. 

Ren is startled to hear him speak unprompted, and turns to him while taking a break from stuffing her face with pancakes. "Yeah?"

She'd woken up with him this morning, and it had been so nice that she almost cried when he got up. But she'd relished in those few minutes of the two of them just laying together, feeling his warmth pressed to her back, his hand curled around the pudge on her belly. The kiss he'd stolen, lightly touched to the back of her neck, had felt like back when things were normal between them.

"Yeah," he agrees, leaning against the screen door. "You've talked to everyone now, haven't you?"

For once, she actually feels like she's done something wrong, though he doesn't actually look angry this time. To avoid answering, she shoves another forkful of pancake in her moth and stares. So he spoke to her this morning, since Ren conned him into going to bed. Leo smiles faintly.

"What did she say?" he asks.

She mumbles something around her mouthful of cakes, but he shakes his head. "I'm not angry with you, not this time. I just want to know what she said."

It takes half a glass of juice to get the food down. It's so strange to see Leo without worry and stress weighing on his figure, to not see him frustrated or silent. He's patient while she chokes on her juice, waits until her coughing fit is over to raise his brow at her. _Well?_

Ren coughs one last time, clearing the citrus from her airway. "Something about the two of us proving ourselves."

He nods. "Yes. Sounds right."

Sounds right. Sounds right! So she's onto something?

There's nothing else that follows, and he stays against the door, letting her eat in peace. She's just about to finish the last of her drink and offer to make him some pancakes, when he speaks once more.

"I truly can and can't, at the same time, believe you called Mother a cunt."

Ren chokes on her juice again.

 

The silence comes again, as she knew it would. But it feels different this time. Less heavy. Left alone too long, Ren's mind goes to work.

Prove herself. Prove herself? What the hell does it mean? Who is she proving to, and why? What's the purpose? Is she supposed to prove she can survive this fucked up family of oddball Gods? Because if so, she shouldn't be dealing with this shit anymore. She's already _more_ than proved herself in that sense, having lived with the harassment campaign from her sibling-in-laws, the shitstorm between Leo and herself. What more is there?

With all of her last ditch efforts already exhausted, Ren decides to just sit out for a while. As long as nothing takes her out, she's got an eternity to 'prove herself'. She'll figure it out.

She takes up half of the couch, stacks some books on the coffee table and just spends the day reading. Leo joins her sometime in the afternoon, filling in an old crossword book that he's erased and redone dozens of times by now. Man, she should find him a new one. That would get her some nice brownie points from him.

"Hey Leo?" she finds herself asking as the light begins to fade outside. "I just... What happened? What's wrong between us?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his shoulders tense. He doesn't say anything though, which is to be expected. 

"I just really miss you. I can't even pinpoint when things started going sour between us. It was like one day everything was okay, and the next we weren't on speaking terms."

Leo remains silent. He reaches past her and grabs a book off of the table, abandoning the crossword in his lap. Ren returns to her book, feeling a little dejected, but otherwise unaffected. She knew this would happen. She's asked this same question dozens of times, and he can never tell her what's wrong, why everything has gone to hell in their relationship.

A couple of minutes pass before he startles her out of her book. He nudges her shoulder a second time and offers his own book out to her, taps the bottom of one page. She frowns and looks at where he touched, but it's only blank space. Maybe the line above it is what he wanted? But there's nothing that makes sense.

He taps the page again when she looks to him, a silent question showing in the pull of her brows. Ren looks at the page again, starts from the top. Maybe he wants her to read the whole page.

A fourth of the way down the page, the word 'devotion' is underlined in faint gray graphite.

"Devotion?" she says aloud, meeting his eyes. She doesn't understand, and tells him as much.

He takes the book back from her and scans the page, turns it. He flips three more times before seemingly finding what he wants and underlining it. He looks nervous as he passes it back to her, like he's done something wrong. The next word he gives her is 'me'.

_Devotion. Me._

"Who is 'me'?" she asks, feeling complete and utter confusion at all of this. "Is 'me' you or me?"

Leo shakes his head. He takes it back yet again, spends ten minutes going through the book before abandoning it for another one. It has what he wants, and he passes it to her after adding a graphite line to the yellowing paper. 'Proof', it tells her.

_Devotion. Me. Proof._

_Prove your devotion to me,_ her mind translates, and she feels a surge of anger bubble up.

"Prove my devotion? Is this what that's all about?" she shouts at him with a sudden ferocity, but he takes it in stride, lowers his head some and lets her speak. "Have I not done that? Have I not proved myself when your batshit family had it out for me? Did I not do that by deciding not to dump your ass when this shit started, and staying in what feels like a cold and loveless marriage?"

When he touches her, she wants so badly to jerk away and storm out. But she lets him take her balled fist and hold it, looks into his eyes when he raises his head back. There's pity in his gaze, sorrow. Love. Leo squeezes her hand before letting her go, and pointedly picks up his crossword book. He flips to the middle of the book, where the solutions to the puzzles are. They don't call them solutions in this book though, they're called cheatsheets, and he underlines the word.

She exhales, lets some of her anger go. Alright. 'Prove your devotion to me cheatsheet'? What cheatsheet? This feels like something is coming together.

With the eraser end of his pencil, Leo gestures at the window behind them. When he's met with a blank stare, he taps the glass. Outside? Okay, outside. Outside for them is just sand though, the sand and the sea.

What could that even mean. 'Prove your devotion to me cheatsheet sand'? 'Ocean'? What else is there-

Mother.

'A cheatsheet for proving your devotion to me, to Mother'.

"I'm not allowed to speak it or write it," he tells her, quiet. His hand comes up, and he cradles her face in his palm "I feel as if I've broken the agreement just by doing this. But I hate watching you suffer, Renee, it kills me. You have to figure out the rest on your own daring, I can't help you anymore."


	11. Chapter 11

Over the next few days, she refines what he 'told' her. She thinks what Leo was trying to get across was 'hint', not 'cheatsheet'. So, Ren thinks what he was trying to say was something along the lines of "This is a hint; you have to prove your devotion to me to Mother."

Which frankly? Ren's a little pissed about that. Their marriage is between Ren and Leo. Not Ren, Leo, and cosmic mother-in-law. Ren's plenty goddamn devoted to him, if the past few months have been any kind of indicator. But at least she kind of knows what's wrong now, and possibly how to fix it. Well, kind of.

To fix it she has to prove her devotion. That much is plain enough. But _how_ is the question. How the fuck will she prove her devotion if she doesn't even know what the woman wants from her?

She just has to give herself time to think. Leo's said he can't tell her anymore, can't give her anything else, said he felt like he broke an agreement? What agreement? Why is there so much that he can't tell her?

There's truly nothing that she can think of to prove herself any further. She's stayed through this storm of him tearing the two of them apart, opening a rift between them that'll take _years_ to fix if they stay together. She's stayed through his siblings trying to have her executed, though the three of them making her life a living hell that she still struggles to remember. For fuck's sake, she stayed even after he put a gun to her head with full intentions to be her executioner. But he didn't do it, and they fell for each other. She's given him her heart, her soul. He gave her immortality because she wanted to- _still wants to_ \- live with him forever. She wants to be at his side, always.

 

Ren wakes late in the evening, disoriented and confused. She didn't intend to nap for so long.. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she finds something to eat while she thinks.

Leo isn't here as usual. He's probably outside as is the norm, sitting in the water and silently conversing with Mother. Explains why he didn't wake her up like she'd asked him to. She thinks about making him something to snack on, but she's feeling petty and decides not to. Eating is just something he does for the taste, not for sustenance. So she doesn't feel quite as guilty eating up all of the potato chips without saving him any. It's not really a problem. She can easily make him more later.

It's still bothering her, even when she tries to let it go. So many things could be considered proof, yeah, but the question is _what_. His siblings obviously aren't going to tell her shit, so there's no point in trying that again. Leo has already told her that he can't say, or rather show her, anything else. Mother is an asshole and won't say shit.

But still... It's crazy, but maybe she can try again?

Ren's up and out of her seat in a hurried motion, residual anger and determination driving her as she heads out the front door. Leo doesn't even seem to notice she's there, despite her stopping less than a foot away from him. She reaches down and gives his ponytail a light tug, startling him out of his trance-like prayer. Confusion is evident in his face.

"Go inside," Ren demands, squaring her shoulders.

"What?" he asks, head tilting to the side.

She reaches, lightly pulls at his hair again. "Inside. Go. You talk to her all the time, I figure she won't miss one night. Go."

Leo hesitates, absolutely dumbfounded. But he rises to his feet after giving the ocean a glance, brushes the sand from his palms and just looks at her. Ren leans in, steals a kiss from him because she _needs_ it. She swats his hip lightly, and tells him once more, "Go."

Go he does. She hears him hesitate several times, stopping on the stairs and the porch, standing in the open doorway. But both doors close after a moment and she looks up to make sure he's really gone. The deck is empty. With him inside, she wades into the water up to her shins. The last dredges of sunlight reflecting off the water paints it a deep, murky violet with hazes of gold on the horizon.

"What do you want from me?" Ren calls out towards the island, standing firm and unblinking.

The only answer she receives is the wind blowing her hair into her face. She pull it back and tucks it into the back of her shirt, since she has nothing to tie it up with. Curling her lip, she starts again.

"Don't act like you can't hear me. I know you're watching, you always are."

A stray curl is blown free.

"What is this?" she demands, her temper pushing up. "Is this some kind of test of faith? _What do you want from me?_ "

The water rushes in a little faster, a little higher, sprays her legs and wets the hem of her skirt. Off in the distance, she can see the palm tree begin waving in the wind.

"No matter what you think, I don't have to prove shit to you!" Ren clenches her fists, ignores the water cooling on her skin as she splashed a little more vigorously. "Our marriage, out love, is between me and him! I don't sleep next to you, I don't fuck you, I don't spend my days at your side! You don't get a fucking say! So if you want me to prove myself? Then fuck you!

"I don't owe you shit! I've tried to make peace with your other psychotic kids even after they tried to have Leo off me! I made peace with him after he put a gun to my head, because he was at least trying to give me a kind end! And you did nothing to stop your asshole kids from trying to kill an innocent woman, and I know for a fact you were watching! _You always are_! I've done nothing but love your son, made him my family! Fuck, my family treats him better than any of his sorry ass siblings do, and my family only met him _once_! You're all a bunch of assholes that don't treat him right, and if anything, _you_ should be proving yourselves to _me_! You're all selfish pricks, and he deserves better than the lot of you!"

Ren's huffing, snarling with anger, fists clenched so hard her nails have drawn blood from her palms.

"I don't have a goddamn thing to prove to you, and I've never had a single thing to prove to him!"

She stands there for a long moment, chilled by the wind and the water, trying to catch her breath from the exertion of screaming out at the sea. Her legs feel oddly cold, and she notices that the waves around her ankles have stopped.

There's a soft laugh in the back of her skull, and nothing else.

 

 

She goes back inside after a while, when nothing else happens. Leo's looking at her with concern, undoubtedly having heard her yelling outside, but she doesn't tell him what happened while she was out there. The water stopping around her... Ren doesn't understand the connotations of that. Leaving drips on the floor, she goes and rinses off in the tub. He's already back outside when she comes out, which, figures he would be.

With her skirt hem soaked with saltwater, she changes into something else and considers throwing her clothes over the side of the deck railing to dry, like she does with his pants. Instead, she just leaves it over the shower rod.

Much to her surprise, she can hear him coming back less than half an hour later. Mother probably relayed exactly what Ren said, and he's probably going to ream her out for saying such foul shit to Mother a second time. But when the door comes open, he looks.. shocked. Thrown way off-kilter.

"She's not speaking anymore," he says, and she doesn't know why that makes her nervous.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops! My apologies for not posting in almost a month, I totally forgot this was here!

Leo interrogates her for most of the night, demanding Ren recall everything that she said to Mother. She does tell him, hesitantly, and the look on her face makes her think what she did was a mistake. The look only grows deeper the more she repeats back to him. Maybe cursing and screaming at his cosmic mom wasn't such a good idea. He lets out a long breath, runs his fingers through his loose hair.

"Not as bad as it could be," he mutters as he paces, in a tone that says it's actually about as bad as it could be. Shit, how bad did she just fuck things up?

"Okay, look," Ren says, standing from her spot at the bar. "I have a question for you. You've spent the night asking me everything, now I want a turn."

He doesn't stop pacing, but he does give her his attention. When she doesn't speak, me motions with his hand for her to get on with it. "Spit it out, Renee."

"This is all because your crazy cosmic mom demands I prove myself, whatever the fuck that means. We all know I'm confused on what she wants out of me on that front." She shakes her head, pushing down her ever-present irritation. "But she told me that _you_ have to prove yourself too. So have you?"

Leo doesn't stop moving, but he does break eye contact with her. She's spent so many years with him that she can read the subtle hunch in his shoulders, the twitches in his face, the way he won't look at her. Shame, regret. Guilt.

"Or is that just more that you can't tell me?" There's a bitter edge creeping into her voice.

"I have," he says after a moment, still not looking at her. "Proven myself, that is. Though after giving you that... hint?- she's beginning to wonder if I really _have_ proven myself to her."

Ren can't hold back her sigh. Leaning heavily on the bar, she rubs her face. This is all a goddamn nightmare. "Fucking wonderful. And I bet she told you exactly what _you_ had to do?"

The lack of reply is an answer enough for her.

"Fucking wonderful," she repeats, pushing off the bar and coming closer to him. Her irritation is clear. "Of course you get the easy end. It'd make life a lot fucking easier if she'd just tell me what she fucking wanted. Like I've said, I don't have to prove shit to her, but if it'll fix us, I'll do it. It'd be nice if she just gave me a hint more than 'prove yourself'."

He stops his pacing when she gets close enough, lets her rest her head on his chest. She curls her fingers into his shirt and holds onto him.

"I just don't know what to do," she muffles into his chest. "I know she was listening. She's always listening, I can tell when she is, she even-" Ren hesitates, but decides to tell him,"- the water, it stopped moving around me this time like it does for you. So I know she was listening."

Leo stiffens under her. He takes a step back, gripping onto her shoulders and looking at her with something intense in his gaze. "It what?"

"The water... went still?" Ren cocks her head to the side a little, looking bewildered at his sudden intent.

"That's good," he says, sounding disbelieving as he pulls her back against him. She barely catches a smile on his mouth before he presses her face into his chest. "That's a very, very good thing."

It's good? Why is that good? 

Leo nuzzles his face into her hair, and if he were a man to do such things, he'd probably be waltzing around the room with her. His voice is dampened into her curls, but the words are clear enough when he tells her, "I swear, as soon as this is over, I'll tell you _everything_."

 

 

Ren goes to bed not long after. She's exhausted from the days events, and Leo isn't paying her much attention anymore. But he's in a good mood, the best she's seen from him in a good while, so maybe things are going to be alright?

He leaves at the first rays of sunshine, not telling her where he's going. But he does wake her to tell her he'll be back soon.

Ren spends most of the day alone with her thoughts, trying to sort out the roller-coaster of emotions she's been put through in the past 24 hours. She went from screaming at a higher God for having a hand in destroying her marriage, to her husband speaking to her more in one hour than he has in the past few months combined, to him telling her that the ocean not moving is a good sign. It makes her head hurt. This shit is fucking confusing, and she needs a break from this nightmare.

So she gets really drunk and naps it off. It's about as much of a break as she's going to get in this sandy hell. The nap doesn't come fast, so she stares up at the ceiling and daydreams until the dark edges of sleep start to creep over. She falls asleep thinking about their little two person wedding on the beach, clinging to the blurred recollection of her vows to him. Ren has every intention to stay good on those vows. For better or for worse.

She's still kind of buzzed when he returns close to sundown, but she's coherent. Leo doesn't say anything when he comes inside, but he doesn't look upset either. Maybe, hopefully, things were alright wherever he went?

"So?" she asks, watching him as he kicks his boots off. "Where were you? What's going on?"

"One week," is all he'll give her. "Just one week."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this one being so short. Next one should be a little longer. Next one should also be the final entry!!!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always very appreciative of your comments and kudos, so don't be shy about leaving either of those!
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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